once-fine

• “It sat in this grim excuse for a kitchen with its once-fine finish marred by scars left behind by the occasional cup of hot coffee or even a cigarette burn or two.”

  Simon & Schuster: Fatal Error

• “What a shame that this once-fine company seems not to be given the wholehearted support from the government and people that its sister organisation, the National Theatre of Scotland, enjoys.”

  The Guardian: Scottish Opera orchestra may be forced to go part-time

• “Goodbye to the realization that a once-fine product has become cheapened and destroyed in the name of profit margin.”

  Archive 2009-07-01

• “From her perspective, the liberals who ran New York had no answers to the once-fine schools that failed to teach, the parents who failed to discipline and nurture their children, the legal and law enforcement systems that failed to keep elderly people safe when they walked to the grocery store.”

  Harold Pollack: Kristol, Lieberman, and Will Unmask Obama's Secret Marxist Agenda

• “Toward the very end his once-fine body had become grotesquely inflated, and he cherished the fantasy that if only he could be lowered into the cold waters of the lake that lay below him, things might still come right for him.”

  The Born Rebel Artist

• “I would refer you to A&E if it wasn't for the balls-up which Patsy's making of our once-fine service.”

  In Praise of Alan Duncan

• “I am sorry to witness the ruin of a once-fine journalistic mind.”

  Firedoglake » And In This Corner…Juan Cole

• “He wore a once-fine hat of brown felt, a frock coat, and pantaloons that he protected from the brush with leather botas that covered his legs from his knees to his brogans.”

  Excerpt: The Gates of The Alamo by Stephen Harrigan

• “The bankruptcy of Enron has been devastating to its employees, its shareholders and many others who were connected in one way or another to this once-fine institution.”

  CNN Transcript Feb 26, 2002

• “His boot came away with a violent sucking sound, and Mrs. Murphy staggered backward, a stream of seawater pouring out of the once-fine leather.”

  Simon & Schuster: LADY of SKYE

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